servo

A servo is Australian and New Zealand slang for a service station, the place you buy petrol, plus snacks, milk, ice and a questionable meat pie.

What servo means

Wiktionary defines this servo as a service station: a place to buy petrol and various convenience items, with or without actual car servicing. In Australia the servo is part of daily life, especially on road trips, and a “servo pie” or “servo coffee” is its own (not always flattering) category of food.

In other contexts, servo means something completely different: a servomechanism or servomotor, the small motors in robotics and remote-control models. Context makes it obvious.

Examples

• “We need fuel. Pull into the next servo.”
• “Grabbed a sausage roll from the servo, don’t judge me.”
• “The servo’s open 24 hours if you need milk.”

Where it came from

It’s service station clipped down and finished with -o, the same way afternoon became arvo and bottle shop became bottle-o. Wiktionary quotes it in Alex Miller’s 2002 novel Journey to the Stone Country, where a character pulls off the road onto “the floodlit apron of the servo.”

Related terms

• Bottle-o: a bottle shop.
• Maccas: McDonald’s, the other road-trip stop.
• Arvo: afternoon.
• Brekkie: breakfast.

See more terms like this in our Australian slang guide.